Volunteer Spotlight: Mark Popadak, Palisades Trail Crew

By Charlotte Rutherfurd and Tina McGill, AmeriCorps members of the Palisades Trail Crew

Volunteer Mark Popadak, left, and his brother Mike Popadak, an AmeriCorps member of the Palisades Trail Crew, work in Sterling Forest State Park. (Photo credit: Charlotte Rutherfurd)

Mark Popadak of Union, NJ, has amassed over 439 hours of volunteer service since May of this year. On an average day, he’s working alongside his brother Mike Popadak, an AmeriCorps member of the Palisades Trail Crew in Sterling Forest State Park, building trail rain or shine.

We thought we’d ask Mark what motivates him to volunteer with the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference.

How did you decide to join the Trail Conference?
“Since I was out of work at the time, I took the opportunity to volunteer with the AmeriCorps trail-building program at the Trail Conference alongside my brother.”

Are you enjoying working with your brother?
“We do everything together outdoors: hiking, canoeing, and backpacking. We have our moments, we always do. But I think we make a pretty good team. We’ve been best friends since we were born.”

What kind of trail work do you enjoy most?
“I like making trails and seeing the end result. It’s great to work with friends, learn all that I can, and have lots of fun working in the mountains. At the end of the day, I like looking back and saying, ‘That was a good day.’

“We’re trying to build trails for generations to come. You can walk down our trail and see what we did. How many times have you walked down a trail and said to yourself, ‘How interesting that [it] goes this way.’ That’s because someone [purposefully] routed it there. The stone work we’re doing is built to last, too. … Those heavy stones that we moved are going to always be there. To me, the satisfaction comes when the work is done. I like to walk through our work at the end of the day and say, ‘Check this out!'”

About Trail Walker

Since 1920, the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference has partnered with parks to create, protect, and promote a network of more than 2,100 miles of public trails in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan region. The Trail Conference organizes volunteer service projects that keep these trails open, safe, and enjoyable for the public. We publish maps and books that guide public use of these trails. The Trail Conference is a volunteer-driven nonprofit organization with a membership of 10,000 individuals and 100 clubs with a combined membership of 100,000 active, outdoor-loving people.

I think these two men should receive some kind of monetary reward for ALL of the exhausting backbreaking work hour after hour that they do. They give up their time to volunteer their work and sweat it out. No one in these hard times would do this kind of work without a BIG FAT INCOME. There should be a reward, no question about that. That is what I think.